Menon frontrunner for NSA

With current National Security Advisor (NSA) M K Narayanan likely to be given a gubernatorial assignment, former foreign secretary Shiv Shankar Menon is the frontrunner among his peers to be his successor.

According to top sources of the Congress party, Shyam Saran, the PM’s special envoy on climate change, has also been proposed for the post.

Saran was one of the few bureaucrats appointed in the Prime Minister’s Office initially without any specific brief. He was later asked to steer infrastructure development of the border areas and then given charge of the climate change issue.

Menon was made foreign secretary, superseding 17 other Indian Foreign Service (IFS) officers, indicating the prime minister’s faith in his abilities.

The Congress brass held two key meetings of its core committee members earlier this week and party sources said the issue of appointment of new governors was discussed. The meetings were attended by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, Home Minister P Chidambaram, Defence Minister A K Antony and Gandhi’s political secretary Ahmed Patel.

Apart from Narayanan, former deputy NSA Shekhar Dutt is also in the fray to go to a Raj Bhawan, the official residence of a governor.

The Congress will also have to accommodate a host of former ministers like Arjun Singh, Shivraj Patil and Santosh Mahon Dev who could not be accommodated in the second UPA’s council of ministers.

Top sources in the UPA suggest that apart from these leaders, the names of former commerce secretary Deepak Chatterjee and former home secretary K Padmanabhaiah are being considered as governors in states like Punjab, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Andhra Pradesh.

Both Menon and Saran had played key roles in negotiating the Indo-US civil nuclear agreement and have an excellent record in South Block, which houses the external affairs ministry.

Before Narayanan — a retired Indian Police Service officer from the Tamil Nadu cadre, the post of the NSA had been occupied by former foreign service officers: Brajesh Mishra during the NDA regime and J N Dixit in the early years of the UPA.

The first review of the UPA ministers is already complete and a Cabinet reshuffle is likely soon. The reshuffle may be linked with an organisational rejig. Currently, some senior Congress leaders like Prithviraj Chavan, Veerappa Moily and Ghulam Nabi Azad have dual responsibility in the party as well as in the government. The party might ask them to make a choice between the two.

The Congress’s biggest ally in the second UPA — the Trinamool Congress — may also bag another ministerial berth in Manmohan Singh’s council of ministers. Currently, it has one Cabinet post and six Minister of State berths.